'But what is it?' asked Giovanni, astounded.
'That's what I can't yet tell you. Fragments of an antique anthology; new riches it may be of the Hellenic muse. And, perchance, but for me they would never have come out into God's light—would have been entombed to the end of time under antiphons and psalms of penitence!' And Merula explained to his pupil how some Middle Age, monkish copyist, wishing to use the precious parchment, had expunged, as he thought, the old Pagan writing, and scrawled his pieties over it. As the old man spoke, the sun filled the room with its slowly dying, evening red; in this last radiance the shade of the antique letters, the ghost of the ancient writing, showed itself with redoubled clearness.
'You see! you see!' cried Merula in an ecstasy, 'The dead are rising from their age-long sepulchres! It is a hymn to the Olympian gods! Already you can decipher the first lines!'
And translating from the Greek, he read:—
'Glory to the gentle, the richly-crowned Dionysus,
Glory to thee, far-darting Phœbus, silver-bowed, terrible,
God of the flowing curls, slayer of the sons of Niobe——'
And here is a hymn to that Venus, of whom you, little monk, have such a mighty dread:—
'Glory to thee, golden-limbed mother, Aphrodite,
Delight of the gods and of mortals.'